tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post7502515322294804949..comments2024-03-14T14:41:17.663-04:00Comments on Triablogue: The voice of Jesus and JohnRyanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17809283662428917799noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post-53898321907485719492017-10-15T09:03:01.547-04:002017-10-15T09:03:01.547-04:00"Less radical is the view that the author rew..."Less radical is the view that the author rewrote the sayings of Jesus to impose stylistic uniformity on his Gospel."<br /><br />In between this and the view that the *entire* gospel is pious fiction is the idea that the teachings unique to John (such as "I and the father are one") never occurred in any recognizable form and that these teachings are made up. But supposedly they are made up in such a way as to be doctrinally consistent with and extensions and elaborations of the kinds of things that are said in the synoptic gospels--e.g., Jesus' "Son of Man" sayings in the synoptics. As you have pointed out in another post, this would mean that the surrounding circumstances, such as the dialogue with the Jews and their attempts to stone Jesus, must also be invented. This is apparently the view of Craig Evans as expressed in the video with Ehrman, though Evans has attempted to characterize it as the view that John "paraphrased" the teachings of Jesus. But of course this would not be "paraphrase" in any recognizable sense. For that matter, it is unclear why one would even use the word "redaction" for this. The phrase "redact the tradition" comes in handy here, since "the tradition" in question would be, in this instance, totally unavailable to us. We have no record other than John's of several of these incidents and hence have nothing to which to compare them to see *what* he was supposedly "redacting" in order to make Jesus sound "more Johannine." Hence, saying that these incidents are "redacting the tradition" makes it impossible to know what happened at all or what the original, true incidents were like. Then again, since part of the argument is that Jesus would not have spoken so clearly as to say "I and my father are one," it looks like there *was* no "tradition" for John to "redact" of Jesus saying something like this but merely an invention based upon the general notion that Jesus was God, derived only from the synoptics or from "traditions" that went into the synoptics--such as Jesus' claim to forgive sins.<br /><br />Again, when they refer to this as redaction, much less paraphrase, they are using these words in very confusing senses.<br /><br />This position doesn't quite say that the entirety of John is pious fiction, but it definitely means that some very important portions of John are much like pious fiction, though allegedly pious fiction based on *something* or other--perhaps just the events that happened in the synoptics!Lydia McGrewhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00423567323116960820noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post-12464503796986969812017-10-11T18:40:42.538-04:002017-10-11T18:40:42.538-04:00I have found it useful to see how much a sheer bia...I have found it useful to see how much a sheer bias in favor of the synoptic gospels factors into what is "allowed" to be used from John. *Allegedly* a big part of the supposed "problem" with John's reliability in reproducing Jesus' words is this resemblance between Jesus' voice in John and John's own voice (e.g., in 1 John). There are lots of problems with that, as you've shown here and as Rob Bowman also lays out in his recent piece. For example, the fact that John *never* attributes to Jesus himself a saying in which Jesus calls himself "the Word." Yet referring to him as "the Word" is a big theological deal for John. So if John was "making Jesus in his own image," why do we find this difference? And other similar points.<br /><br />The additional point I'm making here, though, is that the bias against uniquely Johannine material is playing a big role, above and beyond the supposed resemblances between Jesus' voice and John's voice.<br /><br />For example, in Mike Licona's recent lecture on Jesus' claims to deity, it looks like he doesn't use either "Before Abraham was, I am" or "I and the father are one." (I haven't watched every minute of the lecture, so I'm open to correction if I missed it.) Now, presumably this is because he's trying to be scrupulous about the doubts that "scholars" (e.g., Craig Evans) have cast upon the historicity of those sayings in a recognizably similar form. But he *does* allow himself to use John 5:27, where Jesus says that the Father has given the "Son of Man" authority to execute judgement. In fact, Licona makes a big deal about how this is an independent attestation to Jesus' emphatic claims for himself as the Son of Man, which he takes to be claims to deity.<br /><br />But if you look at the verses surrounding John 5:27, you find plenty of allegedly "Johannine" themes and emphases. For example, 5:24 sounds a lot like John 3:16. 5:26 has the "Johannine" emphasis upon life. And 5:31-37 go on and on about "witness" and "testimony," which are huge Johannine words.<br /><br />So why is 5:27 exempt from the broadscale skepticism concerning Jesus' teachings in John, since it is embedded in a connected discourse full of allegedly Johannine language?<br /><br />There is only one possible answer: It's because Jesus also calls himself the Son of Man in the synoptics.<br /><br />So the synoptics are always treated as the historical standard, and John is arraigned before the bar of the synoptics so that they can tell us whether or not to be shaky and unsure about something in John. <br /><br />This follows from no defensible principle of historical scholarship or research. It is purely a matter of fashionable prejudice against John treated *as a source in his own right*.Lydia McGrewhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00423567323116960820noreply@blogger.com